Page 12 of Captive in His Castle (The Martinelli Wedding #1)

Chapter Six

D ante took one look at Callie and burst out laughing.

She smiled sweetly, curtsied, and then took the seat Bernard held out for her.

None of the staff batted an eyelid that while Dante had clothed himself in a snazzy charcoal suit with tie and waistcoat, Callie had joined him for dinner wearing a tightly wrapped grey towelling robe that fell to her calf, a small act of rebellion but a bigger mark of intent.

Two cups of strong coffee had helped fortify her mind to what she needed to do.

Her mental armoury was secure, but now she needed to keep her physical composure.

Her senses were already reacting to the divine spicy citrus scent dancing into her airwaves, and when she caught his warm, dark eyes, a pulse hidden deeply in her core contracted.

She could do this. Mind over matter.

“You didn’t like any of the dresses?” he asked.

She gave her best nonchalant shrug. “Can’t say I tried any of them on.”

“Don’t you like wearing beautiful clothes? ”

“Oh, I’m as vain as the next woman, I just prefer not to wear clothes designed to titillate men.”

“How do you know they’re designed to titillate men if you didn’t try them on?”

“Number one, you chose them, number two, I didn’t need to try them on to know.”

“Number one, I didn’t choose them, Tullia did.”

Well, that flummoxed her. “You got your sister to choose clothes for me?”

“She knows more about women’s fashion than I do and has an excellent eye.”

“How on earth did you explain to your sister your need for a quick delivery of women’s clothes?”

“With the truth – that I had a house guest who didn’t pack enough clothes for her stay with me.”

“A forced stay with you.”

“Semantics. How are your blisters?”

“Stinging.”

“If the pain gets too much and you want me to carry you to bed later, I will be more than happy to oblige. Wine?”

“Yes to the wine, absolutely not to the being carried to bed.”

Her irrepressible captor laughed and filled her glass with red wine. “Sure about that are you?”

She reached over to the antipasti platter and helped herself to a breadstick and, smiling, snapped it in half. “Very.”

“When you change your mind, just let me know.”

“I won’t.” She dipped a broken half of breadstick into the ramekin of balsamic glaze. Forcing herself to hold his stare, she forced herself to say what needed to be said before she could wimp out. “I don’t like sex.”

His head reared back, and then he stared at her as if she’d just announced an imminent plan to move to Jupiter. “Now those are words I didn’t see coming. What brought them on? ”

“I just don’t want you getting the wrong idea, what with us being stuck together for the next few days.” She finally bit into the breadstick.

“Three whole days and four whole nights before I return to Accardiano.”

“Exactly.”

“And you’re telling me you don’t think we should spend that time getting to know each other…” His eyes glimmered. “… intimately.”

Callie felt her face turn the colour of the wine she took a huge gulp of. Barely ten minutes in Dante’s company and her composure was already shot. She had to do better than this.

“I don’t like sex full stop, and I absolutely do not want to spend time getting to know you, intimately or otherwise.” There. That was better.

His gaze fixed on her; he chewed thoughtfully on a fig. “So you are being serious? You don’t like sex? How can you not like sex?”

Knowing her cheeks were still the colour of the wine and knowing equally that there was nothing she could do about it other than brazen it out, she took a more sedate sip…

wow, it was delicious … without lowering her gaze.

Brazening it out meant brazening it out.

She needed Dante to know she meant business.

All these hot, squirmy feelings for him…

She didn’t know if it was farce or tragedy that her first ever real sexual attraction was with the worst man in the world, but she was completely certain – okay, almost completely certain – that the sensations he roused in her were just a by-product of all the adrenaline evoked by the situation she’d found herself in and all the worries and stress she’d suffered these last few months.

Stress had a strange way of manifesting itself.

Dante was an incredibly sexy man, and she defied any heterosexual woman on this planet not to have fleeting inappropriate thoughts about him, but she had no doubt that if she gave in to her attraction for him – which she would never do considering the bastard was holding her here against her will – the sex would be as awful and disgusting as it had been in her previous experiences.

“I hate it,” she answered flatly. “The only thing it does for me is make me want to be sick, so any thoughts you’ve got about trying to get me into bed, throw them away because it isn’t going to happen. I’m frigid.”

There. That should put him off her.

A crease appeared on his brow. “Does it hurt you?”

“Not actual pain as such, but I get too tense to relax. I feel nothing that I’m supposed to feel and just find the whole thing sordid and horrible.”

The crease disappeared, curiosity replacing the concern. “You feel no pleasure at all?”

“Put it this way, one boyfriend – a different one to the one who called me frigid – told me that sleeping with me was like sleeping with a mannequin but with less enthusiasm.” She tightened the sash of her robe and gave a tight smile. “So now you know it’s not worth your time in trying to–”

“I don’t suppose either of those two gentlemen you described took any of the blame for your failure to enjoy sex with them?”

“No, because it was all me. I don’t like sex, period, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of the conversation.”

To her relief, the staff chose that moment to clear away the antipasti they’d been steadily making their way through, and she had a few minutes of blessed silence that was only blessed in the sense that all the movement around them meant she could try and tune out Dante and take a good look at the intimate dining room they were eating in, and it took a beat for her to realise she’d even thought of it as intimate.

He’d put that word in her head, and as she recalled how the word intimately had rolled off his tongue, the pulse between her legs gave another hot, tight contraction.

Taking another fortifying drink, she inhaled deeply through her nose.

The room they were dining in was smaller and much cosier than the other rooms she’d been in and had a relatively low ceiling in comparison too.

All this, along with low, subtle, romantic lighting, meant the intimacy of it couldn’t be denied.

The table they were dining on was hardly bigger than the table Callie and Georgia occasionally bothered sitting around in their flat, albeit this table probably had a similar value to their entire home.

This was a dining room designed to create intimacy. Designed for seduction.

Well, she’d put him straight on the seduction score, but even as she thought this, she couldn’t help but wonder how many other women Dante had wined and dined in this room.

How many other women had had those mesmerising dark eyes filled with sensual promise locked onto theirs and felt anticipation lace every atom of their being from the roots of their hair to the tips of their toes?

Oh, God, she shouldn’t be thinking like this. Feeling like this.

A mushroom risotto with a subtle truffle aroma was placed before her, her red wine replaced with a fresh glass of white wine. Not being a risotto fan, she approached it cautiously. One small forkful, though, and her tastebuds exploded.

“You like it?” Dante asked, having watched Callie’s expression go from wary to rapture in a breath.

She nodded and swallowed her small mouthful. Scooping a much larger portion onto her fork, she said, “This is hands down the best risotto I’ve ever had. I never knew it could be so creamy.”

Not as creamy as the texture of her voluptuous flesh, he was prepared to bet, and was prepared to bet too that she was unaware of the slight gaping in her robe allowing him to see the tiniest hint of cleavage.

Dio , if he closed his eyes, he could still feel the weight of her breasts crushed against his chest.

“When did you last have sex?” he idly asked after they’d both eaten a good deal of their food.

Her gaze shot to him, her cheeks turning scarlet. “That conversation is over.”

“Why? Scared that talking about it will make you want it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she spluttered.

“Then there is no need to shy away from talking about it. Let’s see if we can get to the root of your problem.”

“Not liking sex isn’t a problem, and even if it was, do you seriously think I’m going to discuss my sexual experiences with you ?”

“The pleasure we get from sex is something every human should enjoy. You’re far too young to throw your sexuality away because of experiences with men who clearly didn’t know their way around a woman’s body.”

Her fork hovered mid-air before she put it on her plate and shook her head.

Her short burst of laughter might have been scathing, but her voice contained a tremor in it.

“Is this where you tell me that sex with you would be different and that you’d melt me into butter and ensure I have multiple orgasms? ”

The arousal already thrumming through his loins deepened.

After leaving Callie in her room earlier, Dante had taken a cold shower but had failed to wash away the mark the brush of her nose had made in his throat.

He’d dressed with his mind in overdrive over what she’d join him for dinner wearing, his imagination racing ahead to fantasise about peeling whatever she chose from her beautiful curves, and then to see her in an oversized dressing gown…

Mio Dio , she could wear a sack and he’d still want her .